Bad at Crime

Trump Instructs McGahn to Defy Subpoena and Skip House Testimonyw.nytimes.com

The President telling people not to comply with subpoenas just makes it look like he’s not smart enough to protect himself against direct questioning. The smartest, best people should have a cover story, shouldn’t they?

Humans Should All be Held to the Same Standards.

A Partisan Call to Arms

"My family and my name have been totally and permanently destroyed by vicious and false additional accusations," he told the committee in a fiery opening statement.

You know who else's family has borne vicious and false accusations? The Clintons. Ever hear of "Pizzagate"? No? How about Benghazi, or "her emails!"?

High profile life means taking a lot of bad press. I don't know if it's fair, but don't pretend that it's just for you.

Also, I think that you actually did these things. I might have been willing to look past it if you had just admitted that teenagers can be terrible humans. I still believe that people can change. I may even believe that this guy did. His unwillingness to admit flaws, though, it makes me mistrust him.

Insurance Rates Might Go Up For Expensive Sick People

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/trump-administration-takes-another-major-swipe-at-the-affordable-care-act/2018/07/07/0f1ff4c4-821f-11e8-b851-5319c08f7cee_story.html?utm_term=.808764b72127&wpisrc=nl_most&wpmm=1

I'm very nervous about this. I'm a very expensive customer, these days.

Let Me Explain the Obvious

When someone says, in a very public forum, heard by thousands of people, to punch dissenters in the face, they'll pay the legal bills, or when someone suggests "shooting something up", or killing journalists, I get  very angry.

This is the reason that I get outraged when people casually speak of violence to the masses as a joke. It's because sometimes, other people, whom the original speaker may never see, meet, or even think of,  hear those words out loud, then go and commit the violent acts that weren't a "serious suggestion", and it's horrible.

It's literally the cause of horror.

Words mean things, and they have power, speaking out in public is not the same as having a private conversation with your friends, and people that diminish this idea are not correct. The thousand times someone publicly suggests violence as a joke and nothing happens does not make up for the fact for any single time that something did.

The Cost of Cruelty

This is the article I've been waiting for:

Trump admin's 'tent cities' cost more than keeping migrant kids with parents.

WASHINGTON — The cost of holding migrant children who have been separated from their parents in newly created "tent cities" is $775 per person per night, according to an official at the Department of Health and Human Services — far higher than the cost of keeping children with their parents in detention centers or holding them in more permanent buildings.

...

At those prices, the additional cost to operate a 400-bed temporary structure for one month at capacity would be more than $5 million. The average stay for separated kids is nearly two months.

I've been saying this for days, now. The official numbers of keeping the family in a holding center as a unit is listed as $298, because those shelters already exist.

My point here is that not only is prosecuting all people that enter the country at unauthorized points costing us our souls, it's also costing us a hell of a lot of money.

I mean, that kind of money could be used to start a "Space Force" or something, right?

Weeping Trees

Sigh.

From

EPA whistleblower alleges spending and travel excesses by Scott Pruitt

"John Walke, who directs the clean air program at the advocacy group Natural Resources Defense Council, said that the executive order prescribes measures “intended to allow more air pollution, or abbreviated air quality reviews that risk more air pollution, or both.”"

Welcome to the new age of darkness. Making money at business is definitively more important than making our air safer to breathe. I suppose I'm glad they're obvious about it. 

I Hope He Was Kidding

...but I worry that he wasn’t, and that reason and tolerance are dying.

Insert Conspiracy Theory Here